Book Review for Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan

 

Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan

Published: June 17, 2025 by MIRA

Genre:  Romantic Mystery, Books about Books, Summer Read

Taken from Goodreads:  In this sun-dappled mystery from New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan, a risk-averse bibliophile gets in over her head when strange notes in a book draw her into a real-life investigation.

Mia Crawford is responsible to a fault. She has to be. Between her high-demand job and taking care of her grandmother and her cats, she has little time for anything else. What time she does have, she pours into reading. Mysteries, romances, thrillers…books filled with women who are far more impulsive than she would ever dream of being. Now, forced into taking a long-overdue vacation, she finds herself on a luxurious private island where she just might have a chance to reinvent herself—for a little while, anyway. She can explore the island. Flirt shamelessly with a cute bartender. Have a vacation fling. Live like a heroine in one of her favorite novels.

Or she can curl up with a good book on the beach. Turns out reinventing yourself is easier planned than done. But when gossipy notes written in the margins of an old book turn out to be clues to the disappearance of another guest, Mia finds herself diving headfirst into a dangerous adventure. With everyone at the resort hiding secrets of their own, she’ll have to solve this real-life mystery before she becomes the next target. 

My Thoughts:  Allison Brennan is a must-read author for me.  She is an author that I go to for a thriller mystery that will keep me turning pages and wanting the book to never end.  Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds has a different feel than her other books.  It is more of a romance book than her other books but the mystery part is still there.  I enjoyed every page of this book. 

I love the setting of an island resort.  Mia visits as a single guest on an island filled with couples.   She immediately finds herself wrapped up in solving a murder of a single woman.  The clues she finds take her on quite the adventure and have her meeting many unique guests.  I love that each guest has their own story and could be the murderer or the reason the woman was murdered.  

Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds is a fun beach book.  The perfect summer read. 

Thank you MIRA for a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

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Meet the Author (taken from her website): New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan believes life is too short to be bored, so she had five kids and writes three books a year.

Born and raised in Northern California, Allison dropped out of college after two years and puttered around trying to figure out what to do with her life (bartender, campaign manager, graphic designer, administrative assistant, waitress—she tried a lot of things while also writing stories in her free time). She ended up working as a consultant in the California State Legislature for 13 years before taking a huge leap of faith and quitting in 2005 after she sold her first book. The Prey came out in January of 2006 and won the Borders Books “Bestselling Debut Author” of the year. September 2025 marks the publication of her 50th book.

After writing 12 romantic thrillers and a supernatural trilogy, Allison began her long-running Lucy Kincaid series which is currently at 17 books and 6 novellas. Remember the first sentence about being bored? Allison knows if she’s bored writing, her readers will be bored reading, so she also wrote five cold case mysteries featuring Maxine Revere, an investigative reporter, and then put Lucy on hiatus to write thrillers about Kara Quinn & Matt Costa. Make It Out Alive, book 7 in the Quinn & Costa series, comes out in January of 2026.

And just to keep things interesting, she wrote two books about former US Marshal Regan Merritt, and started an Arizona-based mystery series about a family of private investigators (Angelhart Investigations). When she gets a good idea she wants to explore, she also writes standalone novels. North of Nowhere is a thriller set in a blizzard in Montana, and Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds is a romantic mystery set in the Caribbean.

Allison continues to hit bestseller lists, though she is still waiting for the elusive New York Times hardcover list. Someday, she thinks with eternal optimism! She has also been nominated for best romantic suspense five times (RWA), won the Daphne du Maurier award twice, the RT Reviewers Choice award twice, and was nominated for the Thriller award by International Thriller Writers for Cold Snap. She’s also thrilled that the narrator of her Angelhart series, Hillary Huber, won an Audie for You’ll Never Find Me.

Allison loves research, and while sometimes she gets things wrong, she strives for accuracy and authenticity in her books. (However, entertaining readers will always come first.) To that end, she has gone through the FBI Citizens Academy where they let her blow something up, toured Quantico, visited the morgue, viewed an autopsy, participated in FBI SWAT training scenarios (as a victim and a bad girl!), and been on several police ride alongs. She even went on a “field trip” the Folsom State Prison where the assistant warden explained—seriously—that we needed to take care not to be taken hostage because they don’t negotiate with prisoners. Her exact words may have been something like, “If we won’t negotiate for our corrections officers, we certainly aren’t going to negotiate for a bunch of writers.”

In 2019, after Brennan #3 graduated from high school, Allison and her family moved to Arizona with their assorted pets (though they had to leave the chickens behind with a former neighbor). Now an (almost) empty nester, she and her husband of 30+ years thoroughly enjoy their grandson and (no pressure) any future grandchildren their kids grant them.

Allison is active on Facebook, X, and Instagram, so if you want to keep up with what she’s doing, what she’s reading, and what she’s writing, those are the places to follow. Check out her blog at Murder She Writes which she tries to write at least once a week, but usually it’s once a quarter. She responds to all email personally, so give her a couple days if you reach out.

For fun Allison reads (surprise!), watches baseball and classic movies, hikes, and enjoys her swimming pool when the weather turns hot.